Chapter 44
Roundtable
Acadia
Hearing Mads’s entire tale has shaken me to my core. It’s rewritten parts of me. Each one of these men have etched their stories into my heart, earning their place.
“Locke, can I hear your story now? I need to know everything.” I look down at him kneeling next to me. He looks so sorry already.
“I’ll do it here. On my knees.” I give him a reassuring smile.
“Mads knows only part of this story, so it’s good to say it all at once.
I was sent to live with a very bad man named Legs O’Bannon when I was young, around ten years old.
Later, I found out he gave my parents a lot of money in the exchange. Do with that what you will.
“You gotta understand why he took me—Legs can’t bond.
Years before, he’d stolen an omega from a pack and got her pregnant.
When her pack found out what happened, they pulled all of Legs’s teeth out as punishment.
He wears veneers. Legs is obsessed with the idea of growing his pack.
Since he can’t do it with his teeth, he’s found a creative way to make it work.
And I am at the center of that plan. I share a last name with him.
We aren’t related. I don’t know how he met my parents. But that’s how I ended up with him.
“His fucked up plan is to force me to bond with his daughter, Aurora, creating a Pack O’Bannon, and making more O’Bannons at his discretion.
He’d be pack lead by proxy because he’d control me.
He started his grooming early. He subjugated me.
He controlled everything I did. Who talked to me.
What I ate. When I ate. Everything. I was his pet.
His plaything. The things he made me do, Cadi, I would never repeat. They are only for my nightmares.
“I was waiting for Aurora to come of age and then for Legs to force us to bond. She thinks we are soulmates. She was kept in the dark about my treatment. Aurora is in love with me. I do not want anything to do with her or her father.
“How I met Oscar and Kol…well, they had business with Legs. Kol was a supplier who wanted to cut him off. Oscar was facilitating negotiations. They settled on an agreement. But instead of just leaving and enjoying his freedom, Kol bit me. Claimed me.”
“Oh my god!” I exclaim.
“I thought we were dead. But Oscar came up with another agreement. If we find an omega before Aurora’s 19th birthday, he’d let me go.
If we didn’t, I’d come back to him and bond with Aurora.
Leave the Soto pack. Legs agreed because he thought he could blacklist us from any prospective omega in Salt Port.
Which he did. But we came here. To find you.
Aurora’s birthday is Friday. It’s mine as well. ..”
I need to stand up. But as soon as I stand up, my head spins and I need to sit down, but I just rest my hand on the table for a second.
“You share a last name and a birthday?”
I don’t know why that’s my only thought, but it is. I step away and pace around a little. I go up to the table of finger food and throw a baby carrot in my mouth so I have something to distract me with.
“Cadi?”
“That’s a hell of a story, Locke. My god. My god! Are you ok? Oh my god, of course not. I can’t believe the pain you’ve endured. All you’ve been through.”
I find I’m still clutching Oscar’s handkerchief, so I blot my face with it again. It’s Kol who turns my shoulders and then pulls me into his chest. He hugs me tight, and I tuck my arms between us.
Oscar says, while very close to us, “Do you understand why we need to bond soon? I must keep my pack together. Kol, Locke, and now Mads are more important to me than anything. I will not let them be taken away from me. Not for anything. I will fight for them until my last breath.”
The conviction in his words ring through me.
I’ve never heard anyone talk about their pack the way he does.
All my life, I had to stop myself from caring as much as I do about those around me.
Even those I read about or see on the news.
I care. But I’ve never cared like he does. I want to help him. I really do.
I look out from Kol’s comforting chest and see Locke still by the table on his knees.
This pack has been through so much, and yet they are so strong. I can’t imagine anyone breaking them.
“Acadia, if we had more time, I’d take it. I’d earn our bond by gifts, trips, fucking, orgasms, and food. I’ll just have to do that stuff after, to prove you made the right choice.”
Oscar saying fucking and orgasms absolutely gets to me. I’d get to fuck all of them, right?
At the same time.
All at once.
I’d wear them the fuck out.
“Would all of you want to be intimate with me? I know everyone has their preferences…” I look to Locke. I don’t know the details of his abuse. And I don’t need to know, necessarily.
He says immediately, “We all want to fuck you, Acadia. As much as possible. All the time.”
From above my head, Kol says, “No one has private relationships right now. Oscar, Locke, and I aren’t like that with each other. But we’d be altogether for your heat, focused on you. Giving you everything of ourselves.”
Locke says, “I have to admit I am going to try to convince Mads to be with me sometimes. If that’s ok? With both of you.”
Mads laughs from where he’s sitting at the table still.
“Fuck you, Locke,” he says with no heat in his words. Locke winks at him.
“Hey, I don’t want there to be any confusion when I seduce you at one point in the near future.”
“Oh my god!” Mads buries his face in his hands.
“I’m pansexual,” I say before we get off topic. “My last pack that I was in contract with was two alphas, a man and a woman, and I was with both of them.”
“Why aren’t you with them now?” Locke asks.
I unpeel myself from Kol, whose heat had done its job to relax my body.
“This is important, actually. I’d planned to bond with them on my next heat, and I’ve stopped taking all my heat suppressants. But I went to meet their daughter for the first time…
“I know there were red flags. Like, that I hadn’t met her yet and they’d been courting me for two years.
Or that she is only a year younger than me.
We met her new pack, and it went very poorly.
She was a late-presenting omega. So they’d thought she was a beta growing up.
And after she stopped being a cute little girl and started growing up, they abandoned her.
I didn’t know. They left her at their summer house when she was twelve and only saw her once or twice a year until she left for college.
Even when she said she perfumed as an omega, they had no attachment to her by then and didn’t care.
“She has chronic bond sickness. Oscar, you helped diagnose her. She’s Ondine with the Meier Pack.”
“Yes, I did. I helped Dr. Chen with a second opinion.”
“I was so horrified when I learned about it I left them. Dissolved the contract. I couldn’t imagine having a beta child and doing that to her.”
“I think I understand now,” Oscar says as he walks toward me. “You wanted to make sure that your pack didn’t discriminate against designations. That’s why you told the Institute that the pack had to have a beta bonded.”
“Yes.”
“You did it after meeting Ondine?”
“Yes. My heart aches for her. I wanted to make sure that I would be with open-minded alphas. I could very well have a beta daughter. I would tear your hearts out if you ever made her feel any less loved than an alpha or omega child. Do you understand?”
Oscar nods his head, and I look at each of them. They each say yes.
“You are a wonderful person.”
“Any decent person…”
“No, you’re empathetic, Acadia. You love those you don’t even know. Any child would be lucky to have you as their mother.”
“Thank you. Do you want children?”
“Yes, and I believe Kol wants a child as well.”
“Yes, if it is possible.” He stumbles over his words.
He doesn’t mean if possible. He means he doesn’t want to pressure me.
He can be quite bashful, I realize. Suddenly, Oscar moves Kol away from me in a quick yank.
Locke jumps up and runs toward me, grabbing me and spinning us so his back is toward Kol and Oscar.
“What is going on?!” I shout.
I hear growling and wrestling.
“Kol can get bitey,” Locke says close to my ear. “Oscar felt the change in the bond. We don’t want him to bite you like he did me.”
While I’m very opposed to getting bitten without my permission, the omega in me feels permission has been granted and would have loved to have been bitten by Kol. But that’s just not how things are done.
Plus, I like talking to them first. Telling our stories. Making sure we know each other. I hear more grunting and wrestling. I twist in Locke’s arms so I can peek at Kol. He’s on the ground, and his arms are pulled behind him. Oscar has a knee in his back.
“I’m fine! I’m not going to bite her!”
“And yet we all felt it. Remember how fast you were with Locke? I didn’t even finish blinking, and your teeth were in his arm.”
I shiver all over at the image.
“Here, I want to help,” I say, and Locke lets me go. I walk up to Oscar and Kol in their little pile.
“Will you get him on a chair?” I ask.
Oscar tips his head at me. Maybe debating whether he is going to listen to me. Then pulls Kol up. Oscar is strong!
Oscar manhandles Kol into a chair, and I stand in front of him.
“Remember how well behaved you were when it was just me and Mads? Do you think you can do that again?” I ask with a smile. Kol is breathing hard and gritting his teeth.
“I won’t bite you.”
“You’re drooling, Kol.” And he is. It drips down his jaw and neck. I turn to Locke, who stands next to me.
“May I?” I ask, gesturing to his tie.
“Sure.”
I carefully undo his black and gold paisley tie. Our faces are close, and he’s staring wide-eyed at me. After I take off his tie, I pat his chest in thanks, then I walk around to Kol’s back. I ask Oscar, “Can you tie a good knot?”
“I can.”
“Will you tie his hands together?”
I hand him the tie. Oscar chuckles slightly and then ties Kol’s hands behind his back.
“What’re you going to do, little momma? Now that you got me tied up,” Kol asks with a tilt to his lips and a deep, sexy fray to his voice.
“Whatever I want.”